Executive Appointment: Rabobank NZ’s Todd Charteris; the country boy banker

Tuesday, 1 October 2024

Todd Charteris is a practical man. When Rabobank was moving its head office from Wellington to Hamilton in 2021, he had a challenge on his hands.

The bank - which operates in the rural and agribusiness sector - wanted wool carpet in the new offices. No ordinary carpet would do - it had to be pure New Zealand wool. But Charteris went one step further.

“We went and - through a third party - purchased wool of three of our clients and had the carpet made.”

But there was a problem. The building’s developer told him that because he could only get 3.6m rolls of carpets “you won’t get it onto the fourth floor”.

“I said, well, leave that with me. Because it was a new build, and I knew the company building it obviously, and I said, ‘Would you be able to leave a window [open] and lift our carpet in with the crane?’ And that's what we did. So I don't know how we'll get it out, but it won’t be my problem!”

The Dutch cooperative

Rabobank is an interesting company - it’s a cooperative based in the Netherlands that specialises in food and agricultural banking abroad. New Zealand accounts for over 20% of its global revenue as well as holding about 22% of local market share for rural banking. In 2023 it delivered net profit after tax of $218 million, up over $25 million from the previous year.

We meet in Rabobank’s Wellington office for a cup of tea and a chat. Sitting in the staff break room, people are coming and going and the sun is streaming in. But Wellington is not where the company is headquartered. When Charteris became CEO in 2018 he undertook a strategic review of the company and moved its base up to Hamilton.

As a rurally-focussed bank, he wanted to be in a regional centre.

“In the Netherlands, Rabobank is a mainstream bank, you know, a bit like ANZ or BNZ. But outside the Netherlands, in about 36 countries, only focused on food and agri really - that’s the primary focus outside the Netherlands.

“And that goes back to those routes of 1898 [when Rabobank was founded] and so ever since we've been in New Zealand, which is 30 years … there's never been $1 of profit leaving New Zealand.”

“It's all stayed here and been reinvested. So [it] stays on our balance sheet, as retained earnings, allows us to grow, because you need capital and your balance sheet to grow.”

In a political climate of populist bank-bashing, Charteris knows that’s a good story to tell, but he also points out that it is possible because of the bank’s success on these shores.

“Now, if we weren't growing and there was surplus capital here, that might be a different story, you know. But it’s that ethos of, ‘Hey, your business is going well. You're contributing to the social outcomes in New Zealand. Keep going.’ And, you know, I think that's that's pretty fundamental,” Charteris says.

Morning walks; clearing the desk

His daily routine involves getting up a quarter to six when in Hamilton and going for a walk with a couple of mates.

“We solve a few problems and then into the office.”

In a world of increasingly house-trained, jargon-addled and media-wary chief executives who stick to talking points, Charteris is anything but. He is direct, but engages in conversation, knows what he is taking about and expresses it clearly.

“What motivates me is really the people and businesses that we get to work with. It's our rural communities, it's our farmers and growers, it's the food producers.”

“We're dealing with real people doing real stuff. That's real important … and it's a real privilege, frankly, to be able to do that.”

He also says he focuses on the basics: doing a good job every day and learning something new.

“If you're not learning something every day, then you're going backwards, you know. So, so be inquisitive, curious, try and make a difference.”

As far as daily work habits go, he likes to more-or-less clear his desk of the day’s tasks by the day’s end. “I don't like letting things back up too much. Sort of starts to play on my mind a bit.”

As is the current trend, Charteris doesn't have an office, and he hot desks. He’ll often finish his day working from home, and - as we are speak a couple of days after the Government made moves to get more public servants working in the office - he muses on the topic. Some people are set up and prepared to do it, while others are not, he reckons.

“I certainly wasn't. When covid hit, I learned the hard way,” he chuckles.

“If I've got two or three hours, I just need to gas something out, I'll just work from home. I'm only five minutes from the office, so I think it's about what's the task you need to do, and what's the environment you need to be in to do it.”

“I've never met anyone who's got too many friends”

Charteris, 53, was born in Tapanui in West Otago, near to the border with Southland. The remote town which now has a population of about 800 is a half-hour drive to Gore and an hour and a quarter to Alexandra.

His father was a stock agent, which meant that the family moved around a lot and he went to five primary schools.

“I think … at the time, it was probably tough enough, but it taught you that sort of resilience and getting on with different people”.

Charteris’ own career would mirror that frequent moving, although in a more global context, and he is open about the effects - and challenges - that has had on his family life.

“I've sort of followed that into my career with Rabo, where I've been lucky enough to have opportunities to move, but I've always seen a move as exciting. I’ve said to my kids a few times … ‘you've got good friends, and you'll keep all those ones, and if you’re lucky enough you’ll make some new ones’.

“And I've never met anyone who's got too many friends … but it hasn't been easy.”

After attending Otago Boys High School, he studied commerce at the University of Otago, starting in 1989 and majoring in finance, and he chuckles “I was there a long time” because he studied part-time for a while.

Other time was spent shearing to pay his way, while he also managed the Harbour View Hotel in Ravensdown, which was conveniently close to the Harbour RFC, where he played club rugby.

“So I’ve always been - my roots have always been - in agriculture. My mother's family are dairy farmers, and as I said earlier, Dad was stock agent, so we grew up on smaller farms, but you know, it was always in my sort of DNA, that food and agri farming connection.”

Ranfurly shield rugby

Along the way he married Lisa and in addition to work has a busy family life, with three children aged 15, 18 and 21.

After university, Charteris went to work at Wrightson “essentially as a trainee stock agent, then a stock agent”.

While based in Greymouth for a stint he played third division representative rugby union for the West Coast in 1996 and 1997 in both flanker and lock positions, even starting in a Ranfurly shield game against a still legendary Auckland side nearing the end of a long dynasty.

“We were leading 7-5 after five minutes!” he says. The end score, however, was 93 to 17 in Auckland’s favour.

During the interview he keeps hewing back to the importance of rural communities - which is clearly a key part of personal identity as well as for the business he works in. There is no set of talking points in front of him.

“It was a great day. I mean look, it was awesome. And that's the whole thing. Communities coming together, that's what rural communities are all about and to be a part of that was pretty cool.”

His interest in rugby has not waned over the years, he now also holds a minor shareholding in the Highlanders Super Rugby franchise.

After a stint in finance roles for Merrill Lynch and Credit Suisse in London, which he says “sounds glamorous, but I was one of thousands”, he returned to a his first job with Rabobank in Te Puke.

“It was a good experience … but for me, I’m a country boy, so too many people over there.”

Returning to New Zealand

After Te Puke, he moved with the bank to Gisborne for 10 years. After that he transferred to Australia (with a four, six and eight year-old) - first to Melbourne for four years where he was the bank’s state manager for Victoria and to Sydney for two years in a national agri-business role.

Then in 2018 he landed the job as CEO of the New Zealand business - and fairly promptly made the decision to relocate the company HQ to the Waikato.

“There was a lot of reason to be here [Wellington], but there was a lot of reason to be out [among] our food and agri businesses, and so we made a decision then to move to the Waikato, which has been really good.”

Rabobank is celebrating its 30th anniversary. This dates back to when the bank was purchased by the Primary Industry Bank of Australia in 1994 - which has operations in New Zealand. In 1998 it then bought Wrightson Farmers Finance.

The bank now has over 500 employees and a presence in most major centres. It sits in a global group with over 42,000 employees in 35 countries. In New Zealand it holds total assets of $16.3 billion according to the Reserve Bank of New Zealand.

For Charteris, the goal of the company is to service is rural clients, understand what they need as well as bringing some of the co-op culture to their New Zealand operations.

To that end, the firm has ‘client councils’. These are four groups of customers - two in the North Island, two in the South island (Rabo’s business is split pretty evenly between the two islands) and they helpkeep the bank in the loop with what’s going on at the farm gate.

Big ambitions

Set up over a decade ago, the councils are “about mirroring what we do in the Netherlands … where we have members, councils will give the bank direction on some of the key topics.

“I sort of refer to them as our conscience, you know …they're not technically members, but at the end of the day, we exist for our clients.

“Because if we're not successful, we can't help them grow. And if they're not successful, we've got no business, because this is all we do in this country. So there's a real alignment there.”

Out of the community councils the bank also launched a Rabobank community fund in 2021, which Charteris says is modelled on a similar scheme in the Netherlands.

“Again, that goes back to that cooperative fruits in the Netherlands … where we actually pay a community dividend there, here we've proudly contributed over $2 million in the last two years to about 100 initiatives here in New Zealand.

Charteris is quite open about Rabo’s goal of being New Zealand’s leading food and agri bank.

“I think having that aspiration is important for our people, but also for our clients. I think they enjoy being with an organization that wants to grow and be leading in the market, and market share is part of it.”

“So we need to be good at it, and ultimately, the market will determine whether we're good at it or not. But that's our aspiration.”